Complaints about near misses, communication issues long-running at LaGuardia

Pilots and air traffic controllers alike have complained for decades about close calls and communication issues at LaGuardia airport, according to a database of anonymous reports filed with NASA’s Aviation Safety Reporting System.

NBC 5 Investigates’s review of the incident reports found 92 entries for runway incursions at LaGuardia Airport – where aircraft got too close to one another and pose a collision risk – dating back to 1988.

Several of the entries also reference communication issues where pilots may have missed or misunderstood commands from the air traffic controllers.

Last August, a pilot reported a close call at LaGuardia Airport after coming within only 300 feet of a helicopter while landing, writing:

“The pace of operations is building in LGA. The controllers are pushing the line. On thunderstorm days, LGA is starting to feel like DCA did before the accident there. Please do something…”

In 2012, a pilot reported he was told to line up for takeoff, then told hold his position – an instruction he says he never heard, writing:  “tower controllers at LGA try to move a lot of traffic…” the person wrote “… sometimes they talk almost non-stop, and very rapidly, which was the case in this instance… We never received the message. This controller’s workload was very high, as he was trying to do about four different things at once..”  

Communication – and whether radio traffic may have been misheard or not received – is one of the issues the NTSB is now looking into in the wake of the deadly collision Sunday night between a fire truck and an Air Canada regional jet that killed two pilots and injured several others.

“Stop Truck 1. Stop. Stop Truck 1!”

Radio traffic recorded in the moments before Sunday night’s fatal collision revealed concerns that the fire truck may not have heard commands to stop short before it entered the runway and the path of the incoming regional jet that was landing.

“That would be significant because that would mean someone may not hear the other part of that communicaiton,” NTSB Chairwoman Jennifer Homendy told reporters Tuesday afternoon. 

The NTSB is still investigating the cause of Sunday’s crash.

Homendy told reporters Tuesday that investigators had recovered both the flight data and voice recorders from the mangled aircraft.

“Our aviation system is incredibly safe because there are multiple, multiple layers of defense built in to prevent an accident. So when something goes wrong, that means many many things went wrong,” Homendy told reporters.

NBC 5 Investigates also spoke to Dan Magner, chief pilot and instructor at Lewis University.

He says runway incursions and “go arounds” happen frequently and rarely result in a catastrophic incident like what we saw Sunday

When asked if he thought it prompt wholesale change within the aviation industry, he said

“Yeah, I think we’ll see more of a…. change to the entire industry as a whole in terms of maybe changes to phraseology that needs to happen in terms of clearance, readbacks, things like that. So, I think will see basically industry wide changes or recommendations made from something like this,” he said.

NBC 5 Investigates checked the FAA data, and found there were roughly 1,600 runway incursions during the past year.

So far this year, there have been roughly 400 incursions – up 10 percent from the same time a year ago.